Meet Australia's cutest SNAKE CHARMER!
She’s only five, but brave Ashara is well on her way to becoming the next Bindi Irwin
For most parents, seeing a snake wrapping itself around their child would be utterly terrifying. Not so for Michael and Katya Ingham, who are used to their five-year-old daughter Ashara wrangling huge pythons, stroking lizards and picking up creepy crawlies.
“She held her first snake at six months old,” Ashara’s dad Michael tells Woman’s Day exclusively. “At home we have a dog, snakes, lizards, birds and turtles, so she really is surrounded by animals.”
Michael and Katya, who rescue wildlife at their home on the NSW Central Coast, say their daughter has always been fascinated by animals.
“From before she could even really understand what an animal was, she was drawn to them,” says Michael, 33. “I tried to foster the same interest in our eldest two children. It never really stuck.”
So while her older siblings Cordy, 14, and Caige, 13, never got involved in their parent’s passion, Ashara even has her own mini park ranger uniform. And instead of asking for new toys, she wants her parents to make donations to the Wildlife Warriors charity.
“By age one she had no interest in any toys except her animal ones, and it was the same with television. If a show wasn’t based around animals, she wasn’t interested,” says Michael.
Not surprisingly, Bindi Irwin is Ashara’s ultimate hero. “At two, she was asking to be filmed while she spoke about her animals, just like Bindi,” Michael smiles.
Her interest continued to snowball, and the family decided to start their own Instagram page, @the_mini_ zookeeper, where little Ashara could share her knowledge and love of animals great and small.
Now, with more than 3200 followers, her parents couldn’t be more proud of her dedication and thirst for knowledge.
“She insists that, as she grows up, she will be a paleontologist, a vet and a zookeeper and with the determination she has shown at such a young age, I have no reason to doubt her,” says Michael.
‘She had no interest in any toys except her animal ones’